Main menu

Daily Archives: October 17, 2005

The 10 core philosophies of Whole Foods — great outline. I love the food at Whole Foods — but the whole thing about “Grocery Shopping as Theatre” is bunk. I don’t go to Whole Foods for the transformational experience, I go to buy food. The thing I hate most about the stores is the stupid non-linear aisle layout. I am sure some genius somewhere thought that it was really creative but it just creates cart traffic disasters. There is a reason why other stores all have straight aisles — they work.

A very senior Microsoft developer who moved to Google told me that Google works and thinks at a higher level of abstraction than Microsoft. “Google uses Bayesian filtering the way Microsoft uses the if statement,” he said. That’s true. Google also uses full-text-search-of-the-entire-Internet the way Microsoft uses little tables that list what error IDs correspond to which help text. Look at how Google does spell checking: it’s not based on dictionaries; it’s based on word usage statistics of the entire Internet, which is why Google knows how to correct my name, misspelled, and Microsoft Word doesn’t. [Link]

On the good side — most props deployed, all foggers working, all lighting deployed.

Yet to be done — test DMX control, finish pneuma prop deployment.

On the bad side — blew a Dove Dimmer. Water and electricity are not friends. I am hoping that maybe just a fuse blew in it, but it was a pretty dramatic blow. I wish there were some outdoor friendly dimmer products.